HIMSS19: Private sector catch-up, patient matching and standard APIs dominate first full day

ORLANDO, Florida — Attending HIMSS without discussing interoperability would be like swimming without getting wet. The packed Orange County Convention Center was buzzing Tuesday over the nearly 1,000 pages of proposed rules meant to foster interoperability and improve care coordination that HHS dropped a day earlier. The sweeping and long-awaited proposals would require some health plans to provide patients with free electronic access to their medical records and makes hospitals responsible for electronic notification when a patient is admitted or discharged. They also push the industry to adopt standard application programming interfaces and define what constitutes information blocking. Below are highlights of reaction from the meeting of more than 45,000 tech executives, policy wonks and government staffers as the country's largest health IT conference kicked off.